Abstract

Metallic nanoslit waveguides are promising candidates for ultrahigh-density optical interconnections. A variety of devices based on metallic nanoslit waveguides have already been proposed that show a great superiority over conventional photonicdevices for compactness. However very few two-dimensional devices have been experimentally demonstrated with in-plane geometries due to fabrication difficulties. In this article, a feasible process is presented using traditional semiconductor fabricationtechnologies such as mix-and-match lithography and electroplating, which is cable of fabricating complicated 100 nm wide, 800 nm deep gold slit waveguides with multiple sharp right-angle corners. The process can be extended to volume production manufacturing with minor modifications, thus enabling the fabrication of nanoslit photonic circuits and networks.

Received 17 June 2008Accepted 07 October 2008Published online 01 December 2008

Acknowledgments:

The authors gratefully acknowledge the help from the colleagues at CNM nanofabrication group: Derrick Mancini, Ralu Divan, Valentina Kutepova, Alexandra Imre, and Suzanne Miller. Access of the nanofabrication faciliy at Center for Nanoscale Materials and the work at Argonne National Laboratory were supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.